Principal Software Development Engineer (Embedded Systems)

Location: Hybrid; must live within commuting distance of the Boston or Seattle offices and work in the office at least 3 days per week.

Base salary: $190,000–$237,500 per year, depending on geographic location, qualifications, and experience.

Company

hirify.global develops connected audio products and software focused on creating responsive, reliable listening experiences.

What you will do

• Lead performance and reliability initiatives across the hirify.global APIs and Player Control components.
• Design and implement architectural improvements, including asynchronous command execution, protocol optimization, and reduced handshake overhead.
• Identify and eliminate latency bottlenecks in player-to-app and player-to-cloud communication.
• Use telemetry and customer data to measure the real-world impact of code changes and improve customer-reported reliability.
• Collaborate with App, Cloud, Security, Data, QA, UX, and Product teams on end-to-end user experience improvements.
• Mentor engineers through design reviews, code reviews, architecture discussions, and root-cause investigations.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or equivalent experience.
• 8+ years of embedded or systems-level software engineering experience.
• Strong proficiency in C++ and experience debugging complex multithreaded systems.
• Experience with REST and/or WebSocket APIs, telemetry, instrumentation, or performance measurement frameworks.
• Deep understanding of networking fundamentals, including TLS/mTLS, WebSocket, HTTP, and LAN communication.
• Must be authorized to work for any US employer now and in the future; visa sponsorship is not available.

Nice to have

• Experience optimizing embedded systems for performance and memory constraints.
• Experience with secure communication protocols, distributed systems, and device-to-device communication.
• Experience analyzing large-scale telemetry datasets and presenting technical proposals to senior engineering leadership.
• Familiarity with CI/CD systems, modern Git workflows, and hirify.global or similar control-plane architectures.

Culture & Benefits

• Hybrid work with regular in-office collaboration.
• Medical, dental, and vision insurance available from the first day for eligible US full-time employees.
• 401(k) plan with company matching and immediate vesting.
• Open Time Off policy, 80 hours of sick time upon hire, and up to 12 paid holidays.
• Paid parental and family-care leave, disability and life insurance, mental health benefits, and employee discounts.